SSDs quickly broke into the hard drive market and almost replaced them in laptops and high-performance personal computers. SSDs are more efficient than traditional solid-state drives.
Comparison of SSD and Winchester
Devices with flash memory do not include mechanical parts, so they are characterized by silent operation. They use less power to read and write data. In addition, the processes of reading and writing data are carried out at a higher speed. All this allows you to extend the battery life of the laptop.
The fastest hard drive in terms of writing / reading information can not be compared with a solid-state drive. On average, if you write 50 GB of data to your hard drive, it will take about 15 minutes. SSD will cope with this task in 3 minutes.
The operating system installed on the SSD, after booting, is set up for use within seconds. All programs installed on solid state drives run faster.
Thus, SSDs have higher performance, higher speed and lower power consumption. But such disks have disadvantages compared to hard disks: shorter service life and low reliability.
The reason for the low resource SSD-drives
The main reason for short-lived SSDs is the limited number of rewrite cycles. The standard flash memory has a guaranteed resource of 10 thousand rewriting cycles. In expensive memory, this resource can be an order of magnitude larger - up to hundreds of thousands of times. Various measures can be taken to prevent the problem of uneven wear on the disc. For example, a controller may be used to store information about the number of rewrite cycles of blocks and write to blocks that are less worn out. When a resource is depleted, the SSD goes into read mode. This allows you to copy unsaved data.
How to find out the resource of an SSD? There are many programs available to check the state of a solid state drive and monitor its characteristics. Let's consider some of them.
Crystal disk info
Allows you to control the status and temperature of the disk. A similar program can be used to check both a solid-state drive and other types of hard drives. This tool allows you to monitor the characteristics of the hard disk in real time while working with other applications of the system.
In addition, the tool allows you to check the values of the write and read speeds, and also has a built-in self-monitoring function of the SMART hard drive. The program for checking an SSD disk for the rest of the resource Crystal Disk Info is open source and allows you to get enough information about the solid state drive. The program can display information about the frequency of occurrence of errors, including the error rate when reading.
The tool allows you to observe scales with performance indicators such as search time and bandwidth.
SSD resource information is displayed on the SSD Life Left line. In this case, the remaining resource is 91% at a threshold of 10%. The same information is duplicated in the column "Health" (Health Status). If the drive is in satisfactory condition, this button is highlighted in blue. If any problems with the disk are detected, the button will turn red.
Smartmontools
The program contains two utilities: smartctl and smartd - for managing a hard disk and monitoring its status. A similar tool performs the function of monitoring in real time. It analyzes the condition of the disk and signals the possibility of its destruction and the appearance of errors.
The tool supports ATA / ATAPI / SATA-3 interfaces; it can monitor up to 8 disks, including tape devices and devices with SCSI interface support. The program can be run on almost any modern operating system, as well as from a Live CD.
Hard disk sentinel
Hard drive health monitoring software that supports Dos, Linux, and Windows. This SSD control tool is designed to find, test, diagnose and solve problems with an SSD drive. The program can be used for external and internal SSD-drives, SSD-drives connected via USB-cable or via e-SATA. The program can scan the drive, recognize problems associated with it, and generate reports to correct errors.
How to check SSD resource using Hard Disk Sentinel?
The figure shows the status of three drives. The health status of the first hard drive and SSD (in the left part of the picture, Health) is 100%, while the second hard drive has serious problems. This is evidenced by the red color that his program highlighted. His health status is only 20%.
SSD Tool
After installing the program, you need to run the SSD Tool in the background. It will check the status of the SSD and, if errors are found, will warn the user about it. The tool can measure the data transfer speed of the drive in real time. This value can be used to detect possible hard disk errors and obtain information about its performance degradation.
Intel's Solid-State Drive Toolbox
Disk management software allows the user to monitor the status of the hard drive, obtain information about the estimated resource of the SSD-drive, as well as the characteristics of the SMART self-diagnosis system. The program has the functions of quick and full diagnostic scanning of the system to test the Intel SSD-drive's ability to read and write information.
The program helps to optimize the characteristics of the SSD-drive using the Trim command, as well as update the firmware. In addition, you can adjust the system settings to optimize SSD performance, performance, and durability. The tool supports the safe erase function of an expired SSD.
How to determine the resource of the SSD-drive using the Solid-State Drive Toolbox, we will describe below.
After selecting the desired drive, information about its health status will be displayed in the Drive Health frame. More detailed information as a percentage of the estimated remaining life (Estimated Life Remaining) will be displayed to the right.
Crystal disk mark
Tool for testing hard drive at checkpoints. With it, you can test the hard drive in the following modes: Sequential read / write, random read / write, QD32.
The program will help to compare the characteristics of the SSD-drive, read and write speeds in arbitrary and sequential modes with the characteristics of drives from other manufacturers. In addition, it allows you to check whether the characteristics of the disk correspond to the parameters defined by the manufacturer. This is the best open source tool to check one or more drives for read / write settings.
Samsung Magician
The program uses simple graphical indicators showing the status of the SSD-drive and the total number of bytes written. The test function allows you to compare the characteristics and speed of different SSD-drives. The program allows you to optimize the disk in accordance with one of three profiles: maximum performance, maximum capacity, maximum reliability.
To improve performance, you can also enable RAPID Mode. In this mode, read / write operations are cached into RAM.
The program allows you to check the speed of sequential and arbitrary read / write. Using the toolkit of the program, you can optimize the SSD-drive, ensure fast and stable operation of the system. An additional option allows you to determine the number of bytes written to the disk and evaluate the remaining resource of the SSD disk.
It is possible to run an SSD compatibility test to determine if there is a conflict between other equipment and the drive. The secure erase function allows you to safely destroy any sensitive data in order to avoid their leak. Unfortunately for users of other operating systems, this program is developed only for Windows.
Toshiba SSD Utility
Program with a graphical user interface for Toshiba OCZ SSDs. The control panel allows you to provide real-time control of the state of the system, interface, capacity, service life and other parameters. Toshiba Utility allows you to update the firmware, check the remaining life of the SSD-drive and select a mode to achieve its maximum performance.
SSD Life
The program allows you to determine the remaining life of the SSD-drive. It is possible to back up data for emergency drives. It is considered one of the best tools for monitoring the status of the disk. Information is displayed in real time and contains data on critical errors.
Estimating SSD life is easy with SSD Life. After starting the program, just select the disk of interest. The program window displays information about the status of the disk (Health) and calculates the service life up to a day. In this case, the disc will last another 4 years, 3 months and 14 days.
Ssdready
A tool running in the background. Constantly monitors the use of the SSD-drive and can determine its remaining resource. Allows you to optimize the operation of the drive to extend its life.
SSDs have a shorter life compared to hard drives. Therefore, it is recommended that you use programs to regularly check these drives. To improve performance, most of these programs have TRIM and Tweak SSD features. It is recommended to use these functions in case of deterioration of the disk performance.
conclusions
Thus, the TBW (terabytes written) SSD resource is of limited value. For the drive to last longer, it is necessary to regularly monitor its condition and take measures to extend the resource. For this purpose, the programs discussed above serve.
In the near future we should expect a decrease in prices for SSDs and increase in capacity. Breakthrough technologies that can significantly extend their service life are not yet expected.